


Subliminal Karaoke; or Five times Sam heard the music

by basaltgrrl



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basaltgrrl/pseuds/basaltgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's hearing things... or is he?  Or is it just coincidence?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subliminal Karaoke; or Five times Sam heard the music

  
  
  
  
**Entry tags:**   
|   
[character: gene](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/character%3A%20gene), [character: sam](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/character%3A%20sam), [fic](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/fic), [fic type: slash](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/fic%20type%3A%20slash), [genre: crack](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/genre%3A%20crack), [genre: humour](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/genre%3A%20humour), [pairing: sam/gene](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/pairing%3A%20sam%2Fgene)  
  
---|---  
  
_**Fic: Subliminal Karaoke - or Five times Sam heard the music, basaltgrrl, Sam/Gene**_  
Title: Subliminal Karaoke; or Five times Sam heard the music  
Author: Basaltgrrl  
Pairing: Sam/Gene  
Rating: blue/green cortina?  
Summary: Sam's hearing things... or is he?  Or is it just coincidence?  
Notes: My first attempt at humor in this fandom... oh wait, I guess the Halloween costumes were humor!

  


 

The first time it happened Sam shrugged it off as a fluke.  It wasn’t such an odd thing for Annie to say, after all—she was by nature supportive and perceptive, and her education and career only reinforced those qualities.  From his first day at CID she had seemed capable of knowing when to speak up and what to say to him, how to handle the crude talk of her coworkers with equanimity, how to deal with a difficult suspect.

So when she put a hand on his arm, looked earnestly into his eyes and said, “Don’t stop believin’,” he figured she was just being Annie.  Even the dropped ‘g’ felt natural.  But when she followed it up with, “Hold onto that feelin’,” he gave her a doubletake and felt himself go cold.

“What did you just say?” he stammered.

“Just… have faith in yourself, Sam.  Trust what you know.  I think you can figure out this case.”

He gave her a suspicious glare.  When had Journey’s Escape been released?  Early 80’s?  Coincidence.  Was Journey even recording in ’73?

 “Uh, thanks,” he muttered belatedly.  “For the words of support.”  She sighed, gave him a disappointed glance and headed back to her desk, leaving him shaking his head in bewilderment.  And at the time he had thought that was it – just an oddity in his already bizarre world.

 

-#-

 

But later in the afternoon Chris came marching up to Sam’s desk with an uncharacteristically mulish look on his face. 

“Look here,” he said before Sam could open his mouth.  “She gave me ‘er phone number and everything, and now it’s ruined!  There’s a stain on my notebook, where your coffee cup was!”

Sam’s jaw dropped.

“And there’s ash in the pages!  Now I’ve got myself lost!”

“Chris,” he said cautiously, “You’re not lost.  Nor is her number.  Let’s see what we can make of it.”  He took the notebook from Chris’ fumbling hands and turned it this way and that.  Sure enough, there was a massive coffee stain on the page, obliterating everything that had been written there.  The ash from several cigarettes was also spread across the page and in the spine.  A few smeared black marks, something that might have been a five, a capital T… but nothing he could make out.  “I’m sorry,” Sam said after a moment.  “Really.  I usually don’t spill coffee like that.”

Chris looked like he was about to cry.  “Now she’s gone, and I’m back on the beat,” he muttered angrily.  “A stain on my notebook says nothing to me.”

Sam groaned and covered his face with his hands.  This was too much.  This was _really_ too much. 

-#-

 

Two days later, sitting around a table at the Arms, three or four pints into the evening, it was Ray who set off Sam’s alarms.  They had been deep into a conversation about girlfriends past and present.  Gene had amused them with a story about early days with his missus.  Chris had mentioned a recent date that wasn’t a complete disaster.

And then Ray set his elbows on the table, stared broodingly into his pint and announced, “Jessie was a friend.  Yeah I know he’s been a good friend of mine.”

Sam choked on his whisky, spraying the tabletop.  Chris thumped him on the back.  Ray pulled back in disgust.

Gene snorted.  “Drink much, Tyler?”

Ray continued after a moment, “But lately something’s changed that ain’t hard to define.”

“Ain’t??” Sam queried sharply.

“Jessie’s got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.”

Sam got up and left the room.  Behind him, as the door to the Arms swung closed, he heard Ray snarling, “And she’s lovin’ him with those arms, I just know it!”

 

-#-

 

The interrogation was not going well.  Gene’s barely veiled threats of physical violence seemed to be making no impression, and Sam could almost see their suspect drifting off into his own little world.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Sam said, striving for calm.  “On Saturday night you were at the canal?”

“We walked in the cold air,” Pete Smith whined.  “Freezing breath on the window pane, lying and waiting.”

“Hold on, hold on.  What’s this about a window?” Gene snarled.

“A man in the dark—“ Pete gurgled as Gene hauled him up by the collar, “In the picture frame!”

“So mystic and soulful,” Sam filled in with a sinking sensation.

“A voice reaching out and a piercing cry…”

“So you’re admitting you killed her???” Gene spat in Pete’s face.

The suspect’s eyes closed.  His lips barely moved as he whispered, “It stays with you until the feeling is gone…”

“Only you and I,” growled Gene, clenching his fists until Smith could scarcely hitch a breath, “know the truth here, and you’re gonna say it out loud.  Say it!”

“This means nothing to me,” wheezed Smith.  Gene tossed him back into his chair.

“This means nothing to me!” and his voice had taken on a sobbing note as he buried his face in his hands.  “Oh, Vienna!”

Gene slapped a notebook and pen down on the table.  “Write it.  Tell us the truth about how you abducted and killed Vienna Miller.”

Sam retreated a step toward the door as Smith raised his contorted face and took up the pen.  “The rhythm is calling,” he said softly to himself.

“What the hell are you going on about, Tyler?”

He sighed.  “Nothing, Guv.”

 

-#-

 

Friday night, however, was when things went too far and stuck there.  It was a typical end-of-the-week piss up, meaning that, after an evening of pints and whisky at the Arms Gene and Sam had ended up at Sam’s flat, neither speaking a word of intent and yet both knowing exactly what was to happen.

Twenty minutes later, stripped and sweating and just about to commence the heavy stuff, Gene bent over Sam’s back and muttered in his ear, “Borderline.”

“What?”

“Feels like I’m going to lose my mind,” he panted.

“What???”

And then, in a rush, “You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline!”

Sam literally leapt out of bed and across the room to put the armchair between himself and Gene.  “W—w—wha…” he stammered.

Gene watched him sorrowfully from his splayed position on the bed.  “Something in your eyes is making such a fool of me,” he said.

“No.  No no no no no no!  Stop it, Gene!”

Painfully, as if the words were being forced from him, Gene grated, “When you hold me in your arms—“

“Please stop!”

“You love me ‘til I just can’t see.”

Gene scrambled to his feet, reaching out to Sam with one shaking hand.  “But then you let me down…”

Sam groaned, clasped his hands over his ears.

“When I look around…”

Sam dropped to the floor, aware of the drag of Gene’s feet as he crossed the room.  “Baby,” Gene whispered, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder, “You just can’t be found.”

Sam curled into a ball, clasped his hands over his ears harder, until he could hear nothing but the thud of his own heart.  And then… there was also the beeping that seemed to fill his skull, and a voice was whispering something far, far away.  He strained to hear.  It seemed important.  It seemed like the only thing that mattered.

“I thought it would help.  He loves music, he always has, but maybe we should take off the ipod.  He seems to get so agitated…”

And then heavy hands were hauling him to his feet, and the wall shook as Gene threw him against it.  Sam’s eyes snapped open, he stared into Gene’s sweaty, angry face.

“Bloody hell, Tyler, what was that about?  You—went away!”

“I’m back now, Gene.”  He rubbed his face, drew a deep breath.

“Fuck!  That put me right out of the mood!  Give me some advance warning the next time you’re about to have some sort o’ fit, ya bleedin’ lunatic!”  He took Sam by the shoulders and shook him gently.  “Alright?”

“Yes, Guv.”  Sam leaned against the wall, legs quivering, and eyed Gene with some suspicion.  “There isn’t anything else you want to tell me, is there?”

“Such as?”

“Um, that I’ve got the best of you?”

Gene cuffed him lightly on the side of the head.  “You know that already.  Don’t need telling, certainly not with that ego of yours.  Now are we gettin’ back in that bed or ‘ave you got some beer in the place?”

“Bed, then beer.”

“Fair enough.”

And as it turned out that was the end of the week of weirdness.

 

 

Playlists

80’s stuff

Don’t stop Believin’            Journey            Escape

Jessie’s Girl                        Rick Springfield

Black Coffee in Bed            Squeeze

Vienna                                    Ultravox            Quartet

Borderline                        Madonna            Madonna


End file.
